ANALYZING CONSUMER
MARKETS AND BUYER
BEHAVIOR
introduction
The aim of marketing is to meet and satisfy
target customer’s needs and wants.
The field of consumer behavior studies how
individuals, groups, and organizations select,
buy, use and dispose of goods, services,
ideas, or experiences to satisfy their needs
and desires.
Understanding consumer behavior and
knowing customers is never simple.
Influencing buyer behavior
The starting model for understanding buyer
behavior is “stimulus response-model”
The model describes that marketing and
environmental stimuli enter the buyer’s
consciousness. The buyer’s characteristics and
decision processes lead to certain purchase
decisions.
The marketer’s task is to understand what
Cultural factors
Culture is the fundamental determinant of a
person’s wants and behavior.
A person acquires a set of values, perceptions,
preferences, and behaviors through his or her
family and other key institutions.
Each culture consists of smaller sub culture
that provide more specifications and
socialization for their members.
Sub cultures include nationalities, religions,
racial groups, and geographic regions.
When subcultures grow large enough,
Social factors
Reference groups : consists of all the groups that
have a direct or indirect influence on the person’s attitudes or behavior.
Groups having a direct influence on a person are called memberships groups, such as: family,
neighbors, friend, etc.
Family
Two kind of families in the buyer’s life :
1. The family of orientation: consists of parents and siblings. From parents a person acquires an orientation toward religion, politics, economics, sense of personal ambitions.
Roles and status
A role consists of the activities a person is
expected to perform.
Each role carries a status.
People choose products that communicate their
role and status in society.
Personal factors
Age and stage in the life cycle : people buy
different goods and services over a lifetime.
Occupation and economic circumstances.
Occupation influences consumption patterns,
such as: a blue collar worker will buy work
clothes, work shoes, lunch-box, while a
Life style
People from the same culture, social class, and occupation may lead quite different lifestyles.
A lifestyle is a person’s pattern of living in the world as expressed in activities, interests and opinions. Marketers search for relationships between their products and lifestyle groups.
Personality and self-concept
each person has personality characteristics that influence his or her buying behavior.
Personality is often described in term of such as self confidence, dominance, autonomy, deference,
sociability, defensiveness, and adaptability.
Psychological factors
Motivations
5.
Actualization Needs
4. Esteem Needs
3. Social needs (love)
2. Safety needs (security)
Perception
A motivated person is ready to act, how the
motivated person actually acts is influenced
by his or her perception of the situations.
Perceptions can vary widely among
individuals exposed to the same reality. One
person might perceive fast talking
salesperson as aggressive , another, as
intelligent and hekpful.
People can emerge with different perceptions
of the same object because of three
Beliefs and attitudes
A belief is a descriptive thought that a person hold about something.
People’s belief about product or brand influence their buying decisions.
Marketers are interested in the beliefs people carry in their heads about their products and brands. Brands beliefs exist in consumer’s memory .
Attitudes is a person’s enduring favorable or
unfavorable evaluations, emotional feelings, and actions tendencies toward some object or idea. A person’s attitude settle into a consistent
The buying decisions
process
Marketers have to go beyond the various
influence on buyers and understanding
how consumers actually make their
buying decisions.
Specifically marketers must identify who
makes the buying decisions, the types of
buying decisions, and the step in the
Buying roles
Buying roles change so the marketers must
be careful in making their targeting decisions.
We can distinguish five roles people play in
buying decisions:
Initiator : the person who first suggests the idea of
buying the product or service.
Influencer : the person whose view or advice
influences the decisions.
Decider : the person who decides on any
component of a buying decisions : whether to buy, what to buy, how to buy, where to buy.
Buyer : the person who makes the actual
purchase
User : the persons who consumes or uses the
Buying behavior
Henry Assael distinguished four types of
consumer buying based on the degree of
buyer involvement and the degree of
differences among brands.
High Involvement Low Involvement
Significant differences
between brands
Few differences between brands
Complex buying behavior
Variety seeking buying behavior Dissonance
reducing buying behavior
Complex buying behavior
Consumers engage in complex buying behavior
when they are highly involved in a purchase and aware of significant differences among brands.
This is usually the case when a product is
expensive, bought infrequently, risky, and highly self –expressive, like an automobiles.
Dissonance reducing buyer behavior
Consumers sometimes engage in highly involved
in a purchase but sees little differences in brands.
The high involvement based on the fact that the
purchase is expensive, infrequent, and risky.
In this case the buyer will shop around to learn
Habitual buying behavior
Many products are bought under conditions of
low involvement and the absence of significant brand differences, for example: salt.
There is good evidence that consumers have low
involvement with most low-cost, frequently purchased products.
Variety seeking buying behavior
Some buying situations are characterized by low
involvement but significant brand differences.
Here consumers often do a lot of brand
switching.
Brand switching occurs for the sake of variety
Stages of the buying decisions
process
Five stage model of the consumer buying
process.
Informati on search
Evaluatio n
Of Alternativ
es
Purchase Decision
s
Post purchase
Decision s
Problem Recogniti
Problem recognition
The buying process starts when the buyer recognize a
problem or need.
The need can be triggered by internal or external stimuli. Marketers need to identify the circumstances that trigger
a particular need.
Information search
An aroused consumer will be inclined to search more
information.
Two levels of arousal consumer:
Heightened attention : a person simply becomes more receptive to information about product
Active information search : a person who looking for reading material, phoning friends, and visiting stores to learn about product.
Consumer information sources:
Personal sources : family, friends
Commercial sources : advertising, sales persons
Public sources : mass media
Through gathering information, the consumer
learns about competing brands and their
features as depicted follows:
Evaluation of alternatives
Some basic concepts will help us understand
consumer evaluation process:
First: The consumer is trying to satisfy needs
Second: The consumers is looking for certain benefits
from the product solution
Third: The consumers sees each product as a bundle
of attributes with varying abilities for delivering benefits sought to satisfy this needs.
The attributes of interest to buyers vary by product:
Cameras: picture sharpness, camera speeds, camera size Hotels: location, cleanliness, price, atmosphere
Tires: safety, tread life, price, ride quality.
Mouthwash: color, effectiveness, germ-killing capacity,
price, taste/flavor
Consumers will pay the most attention to attributes
Purchase decisions
In the evaluation stage, the consumers form
preferences among the brands in the choice set.
The consumers may also form an intention to buy the
most preferred brand.
How ever two factors can intervene between the
purchase intention and the purchase decision.
The first factor is the attitudes of others. The extent to
which another person’s attitude reduces one’s preferred alternatives depends on two things:
The intensity of the other person’s negative attitude toward the consumer’s preferred alternative
The consumer’s motivation to comply with the other person’s wishes
The second factor is unanticipated situational factors
that may erupt to change the purchase intention.
In executing a purchase intention, the consumers may
make up to five purchase sub decisions: a brand
Steps between evaluation of alternatives and
a purchase decision.
Evaluation of
alternatives
Purchase intentions
Attitudes of others
Un
anticipated Situational
factors
Post purchase behavior
After purchasing the product, the consumer will experience
some level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
Marketers must monitor post purchase satisfaction, post
purchase actions and post purchase product uses.
Post purchase satisfaction
The buyer’s satisfaction is a function of the closeness between the buyer’s expectations and the product’s perceived
performance.
If performance falls short of expectations, the customer is disappointed; if it meets expectations, the customer is
satisfied; if it exceeds expectations, the customer is delighted.
Post purchase actions
satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the product will influence a consumer ‘s subsequent behavior.
If the consumer is satisfied, he or she will exhibit a higher profitability of purchasing the product again.
If the consumer is dissatisfied, they may abandon or return the product. They may take public action by complaining to
Post purchase use and disposal
Marketers should also monitor how buyers use and dispose of the product.
If consumers store the product in a closet, the product is probably not very satisfying.
If they sell or trade the product, new product sales will be depressed.
How customers use or dispose of products?
Source from: Jacob jacoby, Carol.K. berning, and Thomas
F.Dietvorst,”What about disposition?”
Produ ct Get Rid of it temporar ily
Get Rid of it permanentl y Keep it Rent it Lend it
Use it to serve original purpose
convert it to serve a new
purpose Store it Give it away Trade it Throw it Sell it To be (resoled) To be used
